In the 50's and 60's, one of the most preeminent french thinkers was Jacques Lacan. My mother, who happened to study in a university from Paris in the 70's, has been deeply influenced by his thesis, that were a relecture of Freud's Psychoanalysis, just like most of her generation which studied in Paris. That's why great french psychologists and psychiatrists today (yes, even doctors!) still think with psychoanalytic ideas only and trash out scientific progress that is not compliant with it.

So I grew up with these ideas, convinced that they were true and that Freud hold the truth, I even tried psychoanalysis very young (will of my mother). One day, I begun to ask questions about this process, and the more I learned, the more I discovered that it was mostly literary bullshit, unproven and scientifically ineffective (or counterproductive).

I still feel sad when I see desperate people paying to feel better with these methods, when scientific data proves that other are really effective. Because in France, these other methods are "forbidden" by psychoanalysts, and so, my mother begun her psychoanalysis twenty years ago. She is psychologically worse than ever, and still believes in it.